Monthly Archives: February 2018
Kalaburagi gets State’s first smart pole Wi-Fi
As part of the State government’s initiative to provide free Wi-Fi services to people at select places, a Wi-Fi smart pole was inaugurated on the premises of Kalaburagi City Corporation by Congress Leader in the Lok Sabha M. Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Information Technology and Bio-Technology and Tourism Priyank Kharge said that the smart pole was the first of its kind in the State and 12th in the country.
“With this smart pole Wi-Fi, one can have unlimited browsing and 100 MB download a day with a data transfer speed of 1 mbps. We are planning to shortly establish similar smart poles in 18 other places in the city,” he said.
Mr. Priyank said that as per the announcement made in the last budget, work to provide free Wi-Fi services in 2,500 gram panchayats was under way. “The task would be completed by the end of March,” he said.
Indus Tower Karnataka is implementing projects to establish smart poles in association with the government. Subbu Ayyar, a representative of the company, said that each pole cost about IRs. 5 lakh.
“The smart pole is so powerful that it can offer free Wi-Fi service up to 300 m,” he said.
Medical Education Minister and Kalaburagi in-charge Sharanprakash Patil, Mayor Sharankumar Modi, Deputy Commissioner R. Venkatesh Kumar, Corporation Commissioner Raghunandan Murthy, District Congress Committee president Jagadev Guttedar and others were present.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu> News> States> Karnataka / by Staff Reporter / Kalaburagi – February 15th, 2018
31
Railways introduces mobile app for buying unreserved tickets
SWR is the only zone of Indian Railways where all stations are covered by utsonmobile
Indian Railways, to make unreserved travel easier, has come out with an app ‘utsonmobile’ to help passengers book an unreserved ticket, without waiting in long queues at railway stations.
Through the app, one can book season tickets and platform tickets too. While the app is available for suburban sections of Southern, Central, Western, Eastern, South Eastern, South Central and non-suburban sections of Northern Railway, it is available for the entire South Western Railway Zone after its launch by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal in Belagavi on February 10.
About 5 lakh people undertake unreserved journey in SWR daily.
The app is available for free on Android and Windows platforms. It offers twin ticketing options: paperless and paper tickets. Upon registration, one can recharge the rail wallet either through UTS counters or through www.utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in.
One has to be within a 5-km radius of the station from where the journey commences to book a paperless ticket with a GPS-enabled smartphone.
The journey has to commence within three hours of booking and one has to open “show ticket” window to show the ticket to a ticket examiner.
The paperless ticket cannot be cancelled.
On the other hand, a paper ticket can be booked even while inside a station and a printout has to be taken from ATVM after providing mobile phone number and booking number. Paper ticket can be cancelled.
A senior official from SWR told The Hindu that all stations of SWR have been mapped with GPS and tickets can be booked from any station to any other within the SWR network. Booking tickets to or from stations outside SWR zone may be done if the station outside SWR is mapped with GPS, the official said.
The official said utsonmobile would be a boon to season ticket travellers as they need not spend a day to buy or renew the ticket. Others doing unreserved travel too would get benefited, the official added.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Mangaluru / by Anil Kumar Sastry / Mangaluru – February 14th, 2018
29
Cake-craft from another era
All made-to-order at home, in the hands of an expert who enjoyed what he did
He was a master creator of wedding cakes that enhanced the sweet start to a marriage… Naidu, tall, dignified and gentle with greying hair, hailed from the Austin Town area of Bengaluru. My parents living in Fraser Town engaged his cake-crafting services for each of the four weddings in the family during the 1960s and 1970s.
Mum would purchase the ingredients and ensure the fruits and nuts were washed, cleaned and dried in advance. Embarking on his task, Naidu meticulously hand-chopped the dry fruit/nuts with such speed and aplomb, one feared for the safety of his fingers. The resulting material was generously sprinkled in with dose measures from the rum or brandy bottle and left to soak for a month before he’d actually blend in the other ingredients, such as flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder and vanilla essence along with a few pinches of ground spices for additional flavour. He’d fold in all of it, so seemingly effortlessly, as he used the wide span of his hands and the flexibility of his long fingers to get the mix just right for baking.
No clumps of fruit dare ruin it. The enabling gadgets of today that fluidly spin everything around just did not exist. Caramelising sugar to the right degree of deep colour and consistency was another art.
As a teenager I would watch in awe as he deftly ploughed through the mixing to dissolve lumps or clumps that might leave a blemish in it. The usual wooden stirrer with a rounded head piece used as a cake-mixer or masher in the kitchen was like a toy before this huge quantity. Hence Naidu used his hands. The vessel containing the raw mixture was enormous and he’d have it carted in a cycle-rickshaw to be bakery oven elsewhere.
Once done, he’d return with the layers and props to start on the icing, also prepared to a fine consistency by him. Layering it on the top and the sides of the cake so evenly, he’d confidently complete the job — perhaps with a wide knife to smoothen the finish. There were no spatulas in those days.
Then followed the dainty decorations, like flowers and hearts pierced by an arrow, doves or whatever, plus a lacy edging. Naidu handcrafted the paper icing cones by cutting out the required sizes and shapes from brown paper. Not likely butter paper was available at that time, as baking tins too were papered with cut-to-shape newspaper, dabs of butter applied to avoid burning! Non-stick cookware was unheard of. Naidu’s incredibly artistic skills would work with a flourish and precision as he effectively brought the cakes to life with figurines. The only off-the-shelf product then available, sugared silver-coloured balls, would be affixed here and there to complete the process.
The plywood trick
The base layers were dummies, fashioned from thin plywood and iced over, with just one triangle of real cake inserted in between and carefully marked out by special borders in the lowest layer to be cut into by the wedded couple: woe if they misjudged the spot!
For the next wedding, the icing would be scraped off and fresh icing applied; the decorative bits would of course disappear into the mouths of eager kids attending the wedding, or perhaps be preserved as souvenirs by the newlyweds. Single slices for distribution to guests were cut and wrapped by him in cellophane paper. And finally the taste of the marvellous almond iced fruit cake was to be enjoyed in the eating.
Naidu was a maestro! He extended his endeavours to theme cakes for birthdays and short eats too; it was well worth observing his technique, the way he fashioned the pastry cases for baking, later filled with exotic contents. While a party was on, he’d be busy in the background turning out round after round of dainty hors d’oeuvres like cheese boats, dainty tarts and plenty else that melted away in eager mouths.
An old photograph in my collection made me recall this unique cake-creator of a half century ago…. He worked hard by himself, self-effacing, skilled to the core!
jacolaco7@gmail.com
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Open Page / February 11th, 2018
27
Meet the men behind Vistara Farms, makers of goat cheese and goat-milk yoghurt
Goat’s milk for health was an old wives’ tale, but 20 friends gave up their jobs to make it a marketable product
What’s common between an IT accountant, a driver, a retail manager and a grocery store-owner? Goats.
The overwhelming smell of goat dung greets us as we walk into Vistara’s farms in Kunthur, Karnataka. The auditory accompaniment is the bleating of hundreds of goats and the hysterical barking of the Mudhol guard dog. Inside the farm, the goats, grouped according to size and sex, stand in their wooden stalls, eyeing us.
The big male goats reach almost to our shoulders. They push around in their pens, their long, silky brown ears flapping around their big, bony faces. As a welcome drink, we are offered a glass of fresh goat milk, still warm and frothy. The taste is not unlike cow milk, but with an added smokiness. Krishna Kumar A.N. and his friends show me around their farm with a sense of proud proprietorship.
With kid gloves
When Krishna starts talking about his goat farm, it’s difficult to get a word in edgeways. On the nearly 160 km drive from Bengaluru to this farm in Kunthur, Krishna has barely paused in the recital of his dream of promoting goat-milk products. His loquacity is apparently quite typical, quip his close friends, who are now his partners at Vistara Farms and are travelling with us.
“I’m just a bridge,” Krishna says, when described as the prime mover behind Vistara, but he is not just any bridge. He has been the link that has brought together 20 people from diverse experiences to turn an ordinary village remedy into a business venture.
Krishna persuaded them to put in their small savings, and he took a personal loan by mortgaging his mother’s jewellery. They bought a farm near Kunthur and began stocking up on goats. Now they have two farms and 200 goats supplying 50 litres of milk per day.
“When we were young, if someone fell ill in our village, they would say, ‘give him goat milk,’” says R. Chetan Kumar, 31, one of Krishna’s friends, who now manages Vistara’s marketing. And as the last days of school drew to an end and the discussions of what to do with their lives got more heated, they remembered the health benefits of goat milk and the fact that it wasn’t easily available. Nor had goat milk caught on in the cities. Krishna and his friends wanted to turn this to their advantage. “We decided to go into business together and start a goat-milk farm,” he says.
The village wisdom is seconded by Sagari Ramdas, veterinary scientist and member of Food Sovereignty Alliance. She says: “In rural areas, the milk of the mother goat is reserved for the goat kids and some of it is used for tea and as a medicine. Traditionally, goat milk has always been used for the sick, the elderly, children and TB patients. It is thought to be good for healing fractures.”
The dream notwithstanding, it wasn’t until 2013 that the friends could buy four acres of land for their farm. Then it was time to buy the goats. After talking to breeders, Krishna zeroed in on the Beetal breed. They purchased the first 15 Beetals from Tavarekere in Begaluru, and the rest from markets in Pune, Punjab and Mysuru. From here on, getting goat milk to the market seemed easy enough.
But it wasn’t. In the first few months after starting the farm, they lost over 150 goats. First, the feed was wrong. Next, the pens were too cold. Next, mosquitoes attacked the goats. Neither villagers nor government officials were able to help. The fledgling farmers drew a blank. So they fell back on their own instincts to set things right. “Our goats are like us. If we are comfortable in their pen, they will be too,” says Ravi Kumar D, one of the partners.
They all had day jobs then, but started to visit the farm more frequently. The pens were covered with polynet to keep out the mosquitoes and the cold. The protein content of the feed was reduced. Finally, the results showed.
By early 2016, the crisis was over and they finally began to supply raw goat milk in 200 ml plastic packets in Bengaluru. Each of them would take turns to deliver the milk. They could make ₹50,000 per month just by selling in their own area.
It’s different
However, the supply of raw milk always comes with the risk of spoilage, which is not only a loss but also lowers the profit level. After many rounds of discussion, the group decided to try their hand at making cheese, which has a longer shelf life and fetches a higher price. They contacted cheese-maker Aditya Raghavan, who spent days at the farm to finetune the product.
Four months into production and Vistara now has three types of soft goat cheese and five varieties of yoghurt under the brandname ‘Basta’, which means goat in Sanskrit. Their factory is a small ground floor unit in Vijaynagar.
We arrive there early in the morning to watch the raw milk, which has been preserved in the fridge all night, being boiled in a double boiler. In the fridge are two sets of soft cheese, made a day apart, wrapped in muslin, and a big block of feta, ready to be packed.
Krishna and company are very proud of their feta as it is 100% goat milk, unlike most of feta available in upmarket stores that is usually 90% cow milk and only 10% goat milk. Priced at ₹320 for a 100gm packet, customers seem to love it, and feta currently accounts for 60% of their sales.
Firm footing
Vistara’s other product is their fruit-flavoured goat-milk yoghurt. They have four uncommon flavours — custard apple, honey-banana, chikoo and tender coconut — and the yoghurt contains real fruit pulp. In 2016, Vistara Farms was established as a private company. The friends are so buoyed up they just bought a second farm in Malavalli, 40 km away. Other friends have opted to join the business. A few months ago, the friends finally quit their jobs and became full-time goat farmers.
Plans are on to increase the number of goats to 3,000 and start exporting the cheese to other cities. One future model they are considering is to give the goats to the villagers for upkeep and take only a steady supply of milk.
It was quite a modest dream; did they think they would come this far? Their only response is a cheesy grin.
The writer is happiest unearthing stories and chasing them down.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Field Notes> Society / by Priti David / February 10th, 2018
25
IIMB professor honoured
G. Raghuram, director of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, was recently honoured for lifetime achievement at the Mahindra Transport Excellence Awards 2017.
It is supported by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. The award is in recognition of Prof. Raghuram’s work in the transport sector.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Karnataka / by Staff Reporter / Bengaluru – March 12th, 2018